


domestic economy

by aes3plex



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21908695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aes3plex/pseuds/aes3plex
Summary: A day more blue than grey, and the rain in rivers down the glass.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Sir James Clark Ross/Lady Ann Ross
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	domestic economy

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted [on Tumblr](https://aes-iii.tumblr.com/post/183033780181/domestic-economy-francis-crozierjames-clark). // a snippet for a sunday afternoon. those slashes are hypothetical: two kisses; nothing more.

A day more blue than grey, and the rain in rivers down the glass.

In the parlour of the house on Eliot Place the doors are shut and the little fire throws more heat than light. Ann, slim and pale, at her embroidery on the sopha, the needle flashing now and again through her fingers, neat, purposeful; across the carpet from her Francis with the paper folded on his knee, though whether he is still reading it James could not say.

James had meant to join them there, one or the other, when he’d finished with his letters, but the room is warm and he has emptied his glass of scotch and somehow he finds himself disinclined to move from the pleasant solidity of the writing desk, its leather chair, its serene domestic prospect. Wife, lovely, straightbacked and upright in her day silk the colour of watered wine, dark curls around her face; dear friend slipping visibly towards sleep, his head tipped to the wing of the chair: a faded undress coat of a cancelled pattern, stripped of brass and braid, ill matched to grey civilian trousers. Worn in, a little; soft to the touch.

From the hall the clock strikes the hour. James blinks: glances at the window, but the weather being what it is he has no sense, really. It might be one or two or three. He hopes it is not three, or he will certainly be late. Pats his pocket for his watch and finds a pipe instead. Tries the other.

“Three,” says Francis, watching him, idly, without turning his head.

“Oh,” says Ann. “James, you’re late.”

“I am,” James says, already on his feet. He will have to have a cab and be quick about it. Hopes Jock will have thought to find him a cloak; the greatcoat has seen its last season, and he has not decided on a new one yet. Without pause he draws to Ann’s side, ducks his head for a quick kiss: she lifts her face to his without lifting her eyes from her stitching. Kisses sweetly, as always, and when he pulls away makes a polite sound of frustration at some error of the needle he cannot see.

He has crossed the three steps to Francis’s side before he has thought anything at all, and by the time he thinks it consciously he is already working permutations: the cheek, the brow or the mouth? A joke or not? Another man might falter. Hesitation, James thinks, is death. He puts one hand to the chairback and one to Francis’s knee and leans: the side of the mouth, chaste. Francis’s startled look before his eyes shut. He does not kiss back. It is not that sort of kiss.

When James pulls away he is smirking a little: can’t quite help it, not with the flush across Francis’s nose and the tilt of his head and the slow blink of confusion. Later, James thinks, though he doesn’t know what it means. Across the rug on the sopha Ann laughs—her laugh of real amusement, not the cultivated titter.

“Back by eight,” James says, as he backs away across the carpet, still looking at Francis but thinking already of the state of the roads and whether he will look too foolish with an umbrella.

“Dinner at half eight, then,” says Ann. “I’ll tell Cook.”

“Claret, please,” James says, already through the door. “I can’t endure another night of sack.”

His last glance before his thoughts turn entirely to the matter of his boots shows them looking at each other, Ann and Francis, as if they are strangers meeting for the first time: both smiling a little, as though they share some common knowledge or habit or preference, have only to find it out. It settles, warm, in his breast.

=

(“You are amazed,” Ann says, when James has gone, turning her eyes back to her stitches. “I don’t know why.”

“Men have been flogged for less,” says Francis. He brings his knuckle to the corner of his mouth: where James had kissed him, perhaps. James’s shoulder had hidden it from her but no mistaking the action: deeply, she wonders, or shallow? Have they kissed before? She thinks they have not.

“Yes,” Ann says, placidly, and then: “James says it’s cruel,” which is true, though perhaps she ought not to say.

“Does he, indeed,” says Francis. Looking thoughtful. Pushes his thumb against his lip as if testing something: what, she does not know.

“You do not seem amazed at all,” he says.

“I am not,” says Ann. )


End file.
